Friday, October 17, 2008

VeganMoFo: I Heart Olives.

Whenever I go to Whole Foods Market, I like to stroll by the fresh olive bar and just feast with my eyes and nose. They've got a serious variety of mouthwatering olives, some stuffed, some unstuffed, in black, purple, green, brown... They are beautiful. But unfortunately in this time of financial concern, they are way too expensive, like $13245677 a pound. No, not really but still way more than I can afford for a tiny container of olives. I've bought some before here and there in the past and they were divine but haven't lately because of the price tag.

The only olives I cook with are the really bland California black olives or jarred green olives and now that I think about it, that's kind of sad. And I don't really eat those out of hand because they don't offer that much in flavor. I was flipping through my new favorite cookbook, 'Olive Trees and Honey' and I found a section on marinated olives. I had a large jar of plain green spanish olives in my pantry and decided to use them to make these Moroccan Fiery Marinated Olives or Zeitoom al Had as they are called in Arabic. Wow, these are hot and so flavorful! They are cooked in a sauce of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, cumin, lemon slices and harissa and then left to cool. These would have been great as part of the meze last night.

i haven't made anything from olive trees and honey yet. i need to get on it, your recipes have been looking amazing!

all of the middle eastern restaurants in new orleans sell this crazy good "lebanese tea." it's tea mixed with a little pomegranate marmelade, sugar, and orange blossom water, then topped with pine nuts...

That picture is killing me, those olives look so good. I love olives more than anything, the purple Alfonso or the Sicilian Green are probably my favorite. They are too expensive at Whole Foods but if you have a little greek or middle eastern shop you can get them there in bulk for really cheap. Usually there beans are a lot cheaper too.

"What do you eat?"

Why, yummy food of course! As a vegan who does not eat meat, fish, eggs and dairy, I get asked this question hundreds of times. I plan to fill the contents of this blog with the answer to that question and to prove that vegan cuisine is full of variety, flavor and abundance.